Payroll settings

How gross salary is split and what is deducted on each payslip.

Who can use this page

Permission needed: View payroll settings (view_payrollconfig).

Roles that have it by default: Finance Manager, HR Manager and Payroll Manager.

To make changes: Edit payroll settings (change_payrollconfig). Roles: Finance Manager and Payroll Manager.

Superusers can always open it. Your administrator can also give the permission to a custom role.

A new configuration starts neutral: all of gross shows as one Salary line, and nothing is added or deducted until you set it up. Apply provident fund and Withhold income tax start off in a new setup; existing configurations retain their saved behavior. The page has four tabs: Pay structure, Pay cycle, Payslip format and By employment type. Without an active configuration, payroll runs fail, and the page warns you.

Pay structure

The left side is a set of cards that all work the same way. The right side is a Preview of a sample payslip that follows what you type, saved or not. Enter a sample gross salary and pick an employment type to see how it comes out. Save changes appears at the bottom when you have edits. It opens an impact warning before anything is saved. Discard puts the page back.

• Salary split: the lines gross is divided into on the payslip, for example Basic, Housing and Medical. Add as many as you need, name them as you like and give each a share of gross. The shares must add up to 100%; the pill at the top shows whether they do, and saving is blocked until they do. With no lines, gross shows as one Salary line.
• Additions and deductions: lines added to or taken from pay, such as an allowance, a levy, a meal charge or a scheme contribution. Each has a name, is an earning or a deduction, and is a fixed amount or a share of gross. An earning can be marked as not counting as income for tax. Untick In use to stop applying a line without losing it.
• Provident fund: the member and employer shares of gross and what the line is called. The member share is taken from pay; both shares post to the Provident fund ledger when the run is approved. Generation only shows a projected balance. Turn Apply provident fund off if your organization does not offer it. Its fields are hidden, existing rates are retained, and no new contributions or PF deductions are generated, including employment-type and individual overrides. Turn it on to set the Employee share (%), Employer share (%) and payslip name.
• Income tax: turn Withhold income tax on only when the organization withholds through payroll. When off, tax fields are hidden and no income-tax lines or deductions are generated, including individual tax rates. Saved rates, bands and labels are retained. When on, choose what the line is called and how tax is worked out. A rate set on each person applies the rate saved on their pay settings to earned salary plus taxable additions, and people with no rate pay none. Tax slabs, worked out each month taxes yearly income in bands: each band starts where the last one ends, only the income inside a band is taxed at its rate, and the monthly tax is the tax on twelve months of earned salary plus taxable additions divided by twelve. Tax slabs, adjusted through the year works on the income earned so far this financial year instead: the bands are scaled to the months worked, and the tax already withheld is taken off, so a bonus month is taxed at the rate it reaches. Months are counted from the person's first payslip of the year. A rate set on a person still replaces the slabs for them.
• Pay cycle tab / Pay cycle and calculation: configure the request cutoff / period end day, preparation start, payslip release deadline, target payday and payment deadline. Use Preview resolved schedule to see actual dates before saving. The shared Effective month selector loads the settings for a pay month. Current and future pay months can be edited, including a month that already has a configuration. A cycle transition begins the day after the preceding period ends, preventing gaps and overlaps.
• Calculation methods: choose Actual calendar days, Fixed divisor, or Scheduled working days. Joining/leaving proration, unpaid-day deductions and extra-day pay have separate controls. A complete cycle pays the agreed monthly salary. Partial fixed-divisor salary is capped at the applicable monthly salary.
• Calendar: calendar-day salary includes weekends and public holidays within employment. Working-day salary uses the employee's assigned weekdays, falling back to the organization calendar, and excludes public holidays. Personal absences are handled separately.

Every salary part, addition and deduction can be limited to some employment types: select Limit to some employment types on the line and tick the types. A line limited to Contract staff, for example, is left off everyone else's payslip. The shares of the salary split are checked for each employment type separately, so a type that has its own split must add up to 100% on its own.

Default salary line belongs to Salary split, and names the single salary line when no split is configured. The Effective month selector above the tabs’ content applies to every configuration tab. Choose the month before editing; changing it with unsaved edits asks whether to discard them. If loading the selected month fails, Try again retries that same month. The preview states whether PF and tax are on or off. In Sample data (illustrative), an entered Individual tax rate (%) replaces the company tax bands, including when the entered rate is zero.

A person can have a line left off their payslips in Pay settings on the payroll run, and can have their own provident fund or tax rate there.

Net pay is earned salary plus additions and reimbursements minus deductions. Each salary segment uses the whole cycle's divisor. For a 30-day cycle at 90,000, joining on 19 October gives 2 eligible days and 6,000; joining on 5 October gives 16 days and 48,000. A change from 90,000 to 100,000 on 10 October yields (90,000 × 19 ÷ 30) + (100,000 × 11 ÷ 30) = 93,666.67.

Runs keep policy and calendar snapshots. Saving through Payroll configuration first shows a warning; confirming automatically updates affected draft and under-review runs. Approved and disbursed runs keep their saved snapshots.

By employment type

An employment type can have its own provident fund rates instead of the company's. Day calculations use the configured cycle method and assigned calendar. When provident fund is off, an information alert explains that these saved rates do not apply. The table lists each employment type as Company rates or Own rules. Select the edit icon to set them; anything you leave empty uses the company rate. Apply to edits stages the rates without saving them. Use company rates stages a return to the defaults. Select Save changes to review and confirm the changes along with the rest of the configuration. Everything else a type is paid or charged is set as lines on the Pay structure tab, limited to that type.

The Pay cycle tab also controls Pay-month naming: label a cycle by the month it ends (the initial setting) or the month it starts. Preparation/release dates use the period-end month; the payment window follows that month. Enter a Sample monthly salary and optional joining/last employment dates, then Preview resolved schedule to check both dates and the prorated salary before saving.

In a run's Pay settings, Scheduled work calendar assigns weekdays for an employee. Leaving all days clear uses the organization calendar. Joining and last employment dates are inclusive.

On Pay cycle, What your selections mean explains the selected naming, cutoff, payslip release and payment dates, joining/leaving proration, unpaid-day deductions and extra-day pay. It updates immediately as you change the form. The panel sits on the right on desktop and below the form on mobile. It describes the rules; Preview resolved schedule provides exact dates, including working-day adjustments.

Payslip format

The editor displays the existing salary-slip layout using illustrative employee and pay data. Its toolbar groups Effective month, Reload and Preview PDF together. Changing the month or reloading prompts before discarding unsaved edits. Opening Payslip format automatically collapses the app sidebar to its icon rail; you can expand it again using Expand sidebar. Use Fit width to see the whole document, or 100% to inspect it at full size with scrolling. These controls affect only the browser preview; PDFs always use full-width A4 pages. On wide screens, Sections sits beside the document preview, with Properties on the right. Select a section in the list or directly on the preview to edit its properties. On smaller screens, use the Sections, Preview and Properties tabs; selecting a section opens Properties.

The Sections list is always available in its pane. Each row has an eye icon to show or hide the section and arrows to move it up or down. A crossed-out eye marks a hidden section. Default section names use sentence case (for example, Salary and Tax/fund information to date). You can override their capitalization by editing the section title; saved custom titles are preserved. No custom sections can be added.

• Document style: edit the document title and amount-column label, choose a typeface, text size, spacing and header color, and show or hide the company logo. Corners chooses Rounded or Square edges for the payslip and all its sections, including the PDF. Rounded is the default. Header colors are circular swatches from the app’s theme palettes, with a checkmark on the selected color. Resetting all formatting selects Graphite, with one black swatch. Legacy Ink is represented by the same swatch; other saved colors remain available until you select a theme color. The selected color is saved with the format and used in both the preview and PDF. When the logo is hidden or unavailable, the company name is shown.
• Document-wide styling: choose Filled bar, Underline or Plain for all section headings; Bold, Shaded or Plain for all total rows; and Regular or Bold independently for label and amount columns. The optimized defaults are filled headings, bold totals, and regular labels and amounts. These choices apply to every section and its PDF; heading design is no longer edited per section. Previously issued documents retain their saved appearance.
• Section settings: change the section title, full or half width, half-width position, heading/note alignment and italic text. Width, position and alignment use grouped choices with the selected option highlighted. Width and alignment include visual icons; a short explanation shows whether the section spans the document or uses one of two columns. The reset action sits below the formatting controls with an explanation of what it restores. Existing fixed labels, such as Gross salary and Net pay, can be renamed.
• Notes: every section has a Section note (optional) field, empty by default. Notes appear below the section heading in the preview and PDF. Header and footer notes appear as standalone text. Existing saved notes are preserved. Saving notes or design updates the shared presentation of every payslip, including old approved runs, without changing their financial records. Empty notes are omitted from issued slips and PDFs; the editor keeps an add-note affordance for empty header/footer sections.
• Reset all formatting restores the initial layout and styles; Reset this section restores the selected section’s styling and labels. These are unsaved edits until you confirm a save. Note text is retained by these reset actions.

Person details includes person name, person ID, department, designation, pay month and pay period. Calculation, status, release and eligible period are omitted from this section.

The available sections are Header note, Person details, Salary, Tax/fund information, Additions, Deductions, Reimbursements, Subtotal and Footer note. Reimbursements appear on issued slips when there are reimbursement lines or a section note. Pay-line names and calculated amounts come from payroll settings and employee data; use Edit pay structure to edit the pay lines.

The sample uses synthetic employee data and optional manually entered rates, balances and pay lines. Preview PDF uses the same unsaved scenario without updating payroll. On smaller screens, switch between Sections, Preview and Properties. Issued, downloaded and emailed payslips use the latest shared design and their original financial records.

Effective month and confirmation

Choose Effective month before editing. Financial-rule edits support the current month and future months. Shared design and pay-line display-order edits can be saved for any selected month. If that month already has approved or disbursed payroll, return the payroll to review before changing its configuration. The first payroll configuration may start in an earlier month so historical payroll can be prepared. Once a configuration exists, financial edits to earlier pay months are blocked.

Save changes or Save configuration first opens a warning describing the edited fields, later configurations affected, unapproved runs and payslip counts, and approved runs that will stay frozen. Cancel keeps your unsaved edits. Merge and update payslips confirms the save:

• An existing configuration for the selected month receives the edited fields. If no version starts in that month, a new version inherits the configuration in effect then.
• The same edited fields overwrite those fields in later configurations, even if those later values were saved earlier. Untouched fields are preserved. This also applies to individual format settings and employment-type rates.
• Draft and under-review runs from that month onward update automatically. Pay-rule changes recalculate existing payslips; format and note changes refresh their presentation without changing pay amounts. Empty drafts remain ready for generation.
• Approved and disbursed runs retain amounts, financial rules and calculation evidence. All slips render with the latest saved shared design, notes and display order, regardless of approval status or pay month.
• Configuration changes and payroll refreshes are saved together. If recalculation fails, the entire save rolls back. Cycle changes that would create a gap or overlap with an adjacent approved period are rejected.

If another person changes payroll settings or a run after you loaded the month or reviewed the warning, the save is rejected. Reload, reapply your edits and review them again. Changes are recorded with the actor, affected configurations and payroll revisions.

Explore sample scenarios

Expand Sample data (illustrative) to change sample employee fields, gross salary, employment type, individual tax percentage, prior fiscal taxable income and tax withheld, PF balance, and fiscal month number. Add synthetic additions, deductions, reimbursements or information lines; only taxable additions increase taxable income. Tax and PF calculations respect the selected payroll configuration. The sample PDF uses exactly the same scenario. No people, claims or financial records are created.

Use the arrows on pay-structure lines to arrange their display order. Saving order alone changes presentation across payslips without recalculating saved amounts. Lines without a matching current label keep their relative order. The selected header color is shared by everyone and does not follow personal app themes.